


Lavender's Blue

by racheltheclumsy



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Werewolf Lavender Brown, fibro-like symptoms, invisible illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 05:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12763821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/racheltheclumsy/pseuds/racheltheclumsy
Summary: Lavender survives the battle. This is her life afterwards.





	Lavender's Blue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first fic for this fandom. I wrote it one night as a coping mechanism for some of my own struggles and thought I might share it. Because of this, many (but not all) of Lavender's experiences in this fic are based on my own experiences living with Crohn's Disease and Psoriatic Arthritis. I have tweaked some of the universe's lore to fit with the narrative a little better, hope you guys don't mind. Living with a Chronic Disease is rough. I wanted to depict that in a character who is easy to associate with. Enjoy!

She lays there in the creaking rickety bed. Her neck and face are bandaged and she can see only from her right eye. A floating bottle of wolfsbane is vigilant at her side with its IV drip tethered in her vein. She stares at the ceiling through the night. Unable to sleep but barely able to stay awake, and on the edge of screaming.

Weeks pass this way and then one day a healer comes in and says she's free to go. She's all better, all fixed up. He removes her bandages and makes her promise to take her wolfsbane regularly. She nods and leaves.

***

Her mother is by her side. Her father is too, and her brothers. They seem shaken, and unwilling to talk, or to even touch her, acting as if she might break. She tries to get back to her life. To do something that she used to do. She tries to knit but she cannot sit still. She tries to draw but she can no longer keep the quill steady. She tries to run but the air presses in on her, she feels as if she might collapse and tears streak her face. She has to sleep. She can't sleep. But she can't keep her eyes open.

***

There's anger. A lot of it. She wants to resurrect Greyback so she can kill him herself. She wants to kill him. He's already dead. She wants to make him suffer for what he did to her. Death was too good for him. She wishes and wishes. But even in the world that she lives in wishes don't come true.

***

She looks in the mirror. The scar is small. Barely noticeable. Little white lines that are hidden by her hair which hasn't been curled in months. She looks at herself, and hates it. She looks fine. Just fine. No scars, no dark circles, her eyes look bright, her cheeks look rosy, and her figure is plump. She wears no makeup, her hair is messy and thin, her clothes are decidedly void of color. She doesn't look like someone who is suffering. She looks lazy. She looks like she has given up. She doesn't look like she is in pain, she doesn't look like she is about to scream, but she is.

***

Everyone suffers. She reminds herself of this every day. She fills her thoughts with at leasts. At least the war is over. At least we won. At least it's not something worse. At least I'm alive.

_But why does it feel like my brain is on fire?_

_***_

People are moving on with their lives. Ron and Hermione have just gotten married. She wants to be happy for them. She was invited to their wedding, but it was on a full moon. Even with the wolfsbane she would have been in severe pain, miserable to be around. She didn't go because she wasn't needed.

Harry Potter has gotten a job as an Auror. Everyone is moving on. Except for her. She putters around her parents house day after day. Her parents are understanding and supportive. That only seems to make it worse.

***

She forgot to take it. She wakes up naked in the woods chilled to the bone and covered in dirt. She runs home crying. Memories of being wild, insane, the taste of some animal still in her mouth. She cries through the hot bath that her mother draws for her, she cries as her mother coaxes her into a pair of warm pajamas, she cries and cries and cries. She lies in her bed sobbing and sputtering for breath as her mother holds back tears of her own and strokes her daughter's brow. They fall asleep.

***

It has been two years since it happened. Two years. She still lives with her parents. She still doesn't have a better hold on it. She doesn't have a job, she very nearly doesn't have friends, she hardly has a life.

She visits Hogwarts. Everyone is there. It's supposed to be a good time. Time to catch up with people. She was never well liked. Not even before. It's exactly the same. People greet her cordially. No clue what has happened. No clue how she has suffered, how she struggles. She breaks off from the group. Desperate for air. Desperate for something. Immediately a door appears and she slips inside. The room of requirement had made itself small. Comfortable, the walls were thick and glistened with a soundproofing charm. A muggle-style punching bag hangs at the center. She approaches it cautiously at first.

She hits it timidly.

Then not so timidly.

Before she knows it she is pounding at it with all her might. Her untrained punches tearing her knuckles and breaking her wrists. She grunts and cries and screams. She _finally_ screams. She screams as tears run down her cheeks. She pounds at the bag with the sides of her fists.

Screaming and crying, finally.

After what seems like hours she sinks onto a soft bed that materialized only moments before, and sleeps for the duration of the two day reunion. Hogwarts understands. This castle has always understood.

***

She returns home. Returns to her routine. Wake up take your potion, eat lunch take your potion, after tea take your potion, before bed take your potion, and repeat. The potion feels like poison. It makes her cold. Makes her muscles ache. Gives her a headache that won't go away. Adding to the pain in her middle. The pain that's always there. The pain that will be with her for the rest of her life.

***

Nobody is searching for a cure, because nobody cares. She is lucky that her potion even exists.

***

She still lives with her parents. Her ever loving, ever tolerant parents. Her brothers are moved on. Gone on to do better things.

She is still here. Still in her same old bedroom, sleeping in the same old bed, wearing the same old clothes, reading the same old books time and time again, and finding no comfort from anything except for her mother's embrace.

She needs to get out. She needs to do something. Her mother reminds her and she knows that she is right, yet the thought fills her with dread and fear. Things getting better will take a miracle. Maybe not, but that's how it seems. Either way, it's not like she will get better.

She will never be how she used to be.

She grows to resent that person. That girl who she remembers being.

Smiling, bubbly, overbearing, over-attached, too many bright colors. She hates her, because she knows it's a lie. It was a lie then, it's a lie now. Even before she wasn't happy. Her personality was a facade. A construct. Something to hide the fact that she didn't have a personality of her own. Being bitten had simply broken her facade.

***

She still puts her foot in her mouth quite often. Says things she doesn't mean. Things that just came out horribly wrong.

Sometimes it's terrible and she cries in the privacy of her room.

Sometimes though...it's funny. Sometimes she says something totally wrong and it's undeniably funny. She laughs despite the fact that she completely doesn't want to. Sometimes a pointless bought of laughter at one in the morning in the kitchen with your mother is the best potion that there is.

***

Nothing has changed. But she is letting herself laugh again.

She still hurts. She still suffers, still feels a gnawing emptiness when she lies awake at night.

But she laughs at things that are funny. Smiles at things that make her happy.

***

She accepts the invitation to Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley’s wedding even though she will be in pain. She puts on makeup for the first time in a very long time. She puts on a new dress, and spends the time that she used to curling her hair.

She goes to the wedding. She cries when they kiss, she dances as much as she is able, and when the pain is harsh she sits down and talks with old friends.

Friends. Funny. She hadn't considered them friends when they were in school. But they reminisce of times past and she leaves with the promise of owls and visits.

***

It doesn't hurt as much as it used to. She isn't lonely anymore. She meets a different person every day of the week. Somebody from school, or somebody from the neighborhood, or even just going with her mother on daily errands. Things are far from perfect.

She still hurts. She still longs for something more at night. Still feels the perverse sharpness of his teeth in her neck. But things are getting better.

Slowly getting better. Things will never be the way they used to be. But she isn't sure that she wants them to.

Things are getting better, and that's good.


End file.
